1 2 How to Get Your Change Into the Linux Kernel
3 or
4 Care And Operation Of Your Linus Torvalds
5 6 7 8For a person or company who wishes to submit a change to the Linux
9kernel, the process can sometimes be daunting if you're not familiar
10with "the system." This text is a collection of suggestions which
11can greatly increase the chances of your change being accepted.
12 13Read Documentation/SubmitChecklist for a list of items to check
14before submitting code. If you are submitting a driver, also read
15Documentation/SubmittingDrivers.
16 17 18 19--------------------------------------------
20SECTION 1 - CREATING AND SENDING YOUR CHANGE
21--------------------------------------------
22 23 24 251) "diff -up"
26------------
27 28Use "diff -up" or "diff -uprN" to create patches.
29 30All changes to the Linux kernel occur in the form of patches, as
31generated by diff(1). When creating your patch, make sure to create it
32in "unified diff" format, as supplied by the '-u' argument to diff(1).
33Also, please use the '-p' argument which shows which C function each
34change is in - that makes the resultant diff a lot easier to read.
35Patches should be based in the root kernel source directory,
36not in any lower subdirectory.
37 38To create a patch for a single file, it is often sufficient to do:
39 40 SRCTREE= linux-2.6
41 MYFILE= drivers/net/mydriver.c
42 43 cd $SRCTREE
44 cp $MYFILE $MYFILE.orig
45 vi $MYFILE # make your change
46 cd ..
47 diff -up $SRCTREE/$MYFILE{.orig,} > /tmp/patch
48 49To create a patch for multiple files, you should unpack a "vanilla",
50or unmodified kernel source tree, and generate a diff against your
51own source tree. For example:
52 53 MYSRC= /devel/linux-2.6
54 55 tar xvfz linux-2.6.12.tar.gz
56 mv linux-2.6.12 linux-2.6.12-vanilla
57 diff -uprN -X linux-2.6.12-vanilla/Documentation/dontdiff \
58 linux-2.6.12-vanilla $MYSRC > /tmp/patch
59 60"dontdiff" is a list of files which are generated by the kernel during
61the build process, and should be ignored in any diff(1)-generated
62patch. The "dontdiff" file is included in the kernel tree in
632.6.12 and later.
64 65Make sure your patch does not include any extra files which do not
66belong in a patch submission. Make sure to review your patch -after-
67generated it with diff(1), to ensure accuracy.
68 69If your changes produce a lot of deltas, you may want to look into
70splitting them into individual patches which modify things in
71logical stages. This will facilitate easier reviewing by other
72kernel developers, very important if you want your patch accepted.
73There are a number of scripts which can aid in this:
74 75Quilt:
76http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt 77 78Andrew Morton's patch scripts:
79http://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/stuff/patch-scripts.tar.gz 80Instead of these scripts, quilt is the recommended patch management
81tool (see above).
82 83 84 852) Describe your changes.
86 87Describe the technical detail of the change(s) your patch includes.
88 89Be as specific as possible. The WORST descriptions possible include
90things like "update driver X", "bug fix for driver X", or "this patch
91includes updates for subsystem X. Please apply."
92 93The maintainer will thank you if you write your patch description in a
94form which can be easily pulled into Linux's source code management
95system, git, as a "commit log". See #15, below.
96 97If your description starts to get long, that's a sign that you probably
98need to split up your patch. See #3, next.
99 100When you submit or resubmit a patch or patch series, include the
101complete patch description and justification for it. Don't just
102say that this is version N of the patch (series). Don't expect the
103patch merger to refer back to earlier patch versions or referenced
104URLs to find the patch description and put that into the patch.
105I.e., the patch (series) and its description should be self-contained.
106This benefits both the patch merger(s) and reviewers. Some reviewers
107probably didn't even receive earlier versions of the patch.
108 109If the patch fixes a logged bug entry, refer to that bug entry by
110number and URL.
111 112 1133) Separate your changes.
114 115Separate _logical changes_ into a single patch file.
116 117For example, if your changes include both bug fixes and performance
118enhancements for a single driver, separate those changes into two
119or more patches. If your changes include an API update, and a new
120driver which uses that new API, separate those into two patches.
121 122On the other hand, if you make a single change to numerous files,
123group those changes into a single patch. Thus a single logical change
124is contained within a single patch.
125 126If one patch depends on another patch in order for a change to be
127complete, that is OK. Simply note "this patch depends on patch X"
128in your patch description.
129 130If you cannot condense your patch set into a smaller set of patches,
131then only post say 15 or so at a time and wait for review and integration.
132 133 134 1354) Style check your changes.
136 137Check your patch for basic style violations, details of which can be
138found in Documentation/CodingStyle. Failure to do so simply wastes
139the reviewers time and will get your patch rejected, probably
140without even being read.
141 142At a minimum you should check your patches with the patch style
143checker prior to submission (scripts/checkpatch.pl). You should
144be able to justify all violations that remain in your patch.
145 146 147 1485) Select e-mail destination.
149 150Look through the MAINTAINERS file and the source code, and determine
151if your change applies to a specific subsystem of the kernel, with
152an assigned maintainer. If so, e-mail that person. The script
153scripts/get_maintainer.pl can be very useful at this step.
154 155If no maintainer is listed, or the maintainer does not respond, send
156your patch to the primary Linux kernel developer's mailing list,
157linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org. Most kernel developers monitor this
158e-mail list, and can comment on your changes.
159 160 161Do not send more than 15 patches at once to the vger mailing lists!!!
162 163 164Linus Torvalds is the final arbiter of all changes accepted into the
165Linux kernel. His e-mail address is <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>.
166He gets a lot of e-mail, so typically you should do your best to -avoid-
167sending him e-mail.
168 169Patches which are bug fixes, are "obvious" changes, or similarly
170require little discussion should be sent or CC'd to Linus. Patches
171which require discussion or do not have a clear advantage should
172usually be sent first to linux-kernel. Only after the patch is
173discussed should the patch then be submitted to Linus.
174 175 176 1776) Select your CC (e-mail carbon copy) list.
178 179Unless you have a reason NOT to do so, CC linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org.
180 181Other kernel developers besides Linus need to be aware of your change,
182so that they may comment on it and offer code review and suggestions.
183linux-kernel is the primary Linux kernel developer mailing list.
184Other mailing lists are available for specific subsystems, such as
185USB, framebuffer devices, the VFS, the SCSI subsystem, etc. See the
186MAINTAINERS file for a mailing list that relates specifically to
187your change.
188 189Majordomo lists of VGER.KERNEL.ORG at:
190 <http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html> 191 192If changes affect userland-kernel interfaces, please send
193the MAN-PAGES maintainer (as listed in the MAINTAINERS file)
194a man-pages patch, or at least a notification of the change,
195so that some information makes its way into the manual pages.
196 197Even if the maintainer did not respond in step #5, make sure to ALWAYS
198copy the maintainer when you change their code.
199 200For small patches you may want to CC the Trivial Patch Monkey
201trivial@kernel.org which collects "trivial" patches. Have a look
202into the MAINTAINERS file for its current manager.
203Trivial patches must qualify for one of the following rules:
204 Spelling fixes in documentation
205 Spelling fixes which could break grep(1)
206 Warning fixes (cluttering with useless warnings is bad)
207 Compilation fixes (only if they are actually correct)
208 Runtime fixes (only if they actually fix things)
209 Removing use of deprecated functions/macros (eg. check_region)
210 Contact detail and documentation fixes
211 Non-portable code replaced by portable code (even in arch-specific,
212 since people copy, as long as it's trivial)
213 Any fix by the author/maintainer of the file (ie. patch monkey
214 in re-transmission mode)
215 216 217 2187) No MIME, no links, no compression, no attachments. Just plain text.
219 220Linus and other kernel developers need to be able to read and comment
221on the changes you are submitting. It is important for a kernel
222developer to be able to "quote" your changes, using standard e-mail
223tools, so that they may comment on specific portions of your code.
224 225For this reason, all patches should be submitting e-mail "inline".
226WARNING: Be wary of your editor's word-wrap corrupting your patch,
227if you choose to cut-n-paste your patch.
228 229Do not attach the patch as a MIME attachment, compressed or not.
230Many popular e-mail applications will not always transmit a MIME
231attachment as plain text, making it impossible to comment on your
232code. A MIME attachment also takes Linus a bit more time to process,
233decreasing the likelihood of your MIME-attached change being accepted.
234 235Exception: If your mailer is mangling patches then someone may ask
236you to re-send them using MIME.
237 238See Documentation/email-clients.txt for hints about configuring
239your e-mail client so that it sends your patches untouched.
240 2418) E-mail size.
242 243When sending patches to Linus, always follow step #7.
244 245Large changes are not appropriate for mailing lists, and some
246maintainers. If your patch, uncompressed, exceeds 300 kB in size,
247it is preferred that you store your patch on an Internet-accessible
248server, and provide instead a URL (link) pointing to your patch.
249 250 251 2529) Name your kernel version.
253 254It is important to note, either in the subject line or in the patch
255description, the kernel version to which this patch applies.
256 257If the patch does not apply cleanly to the latest kernel version,
258Linus will not apply it.
259 260 261 26210) Don't get discouraged. Re-submit.
263 264After you have submitted your change, be patient and wait. If Linus
265likes your change and applies it, it will appear in the next version
266of the kernel that he releases.
267 268However, if your change doesn't appear in the next version of the
269kernel, there could be any number of reasons. It's YOUR job to
270narrow down those reasons, correct what was wrong, and submit your
271updated change.
272 273It is quite common for Linus to "drop" your patch without comment.
274That's the nature of the system. If he drops your patch, it could be
275due to
276* Your patch did not apply cleanly to the latest kernel version.
277* Your patch was not sufficiently discussed on linux-kernel.
278* A style issue (see section 2).
279* An e-mail formatting issue (re-read this section).
280* A technical problem with your change.
281* He gets tons of e-mail, and yours got lost in the shuffle.
282* You are being annoying.
283 284When in doubt, solicit comments on linux-kernel mailing list.
285 286 287 28811) Include PATCH in the subject
289 290Due to high e-mail traffic to Linus, and to linux-kernel, it is common
291convention to prefix your subject line with [PATCH]. This lets Linus
292and other kernel developers more easily distinguish patches from other
293e-mail discussions.
294 295 296 29712) Sign your work
298 299To improve tracking of who did what, especially with patches that can
300percolate to their final resting place in the kernel through several
301layers of maintainers, we've introduced a "sign-off" procedure on
302patches that are being emailed around.
303 304The sign-off is a simple line at the end of the explanation for the
305patch, which certifies that you wrote it or otherwise have the right to
306pass it on as an open-source patch. The rules are pretty simple: if you
307can certify the below:
308 309 Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1
310 311 By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
312 313 (a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
314 have the right to submit it under the open source license
315 indicated in the file; or
316 317 (b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
318 of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
319 license and I have the right under that license to submit that
320 work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
321 by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
322 permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
323 in the file; or
324 325 (c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
326 person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
327 it.
328 329 (d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
330 are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
331 personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
332 maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
333 this project or the open source license(s) involved.
334 335then you just add a line saying
336 337 Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org>
338 339using your real name (sorry, no pseudonyms or anonymous contributions.)
340 341Some people also put extra tags at the end. They'll just be ignored for
342now, but you can do this to mark internal company procedures or just
343point out some special detail about the sign-off.
344 345If you are a subsystem or branch maintainer, sometimes you need to slightly
346modify patches you receive in order to merge them, because the code is not
347exactly the same in your tree and the submitters'. If you stick strictly to
348rule (c), you should ask the submitter to rediff, but this is a totally
349counter-productive waste of time and energy. Rule (b) allows you to adjust
350the code, but then it is very impolite to change one submitter's code and
351make him endorse your bugs. To solve this problem, it is recommended that
352you add a line between the last Signed-off-by header and yours, indicating
353the nature of your changes. While there is nothing mandatory about this, it
354seems like prepending the description with your mail and/or name, all
355enclosed in square brackets, is noticeable enough to make it obvious that
356you are responsible for last-minute changes. Example :
357 358 Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org>
359 [lucky@maintainer.example.org: struct foo moved from foo.c to foo.h]
360 Signed-off-by: Lucky K Maintainer <lucky@maintainer.example.org>
361 362This practise is particularly helpful if you maintain a stable branch and
363want at the same time to credit the author, track changes, merge the fix,
364and protect the submitter from complaints. Note that under no circumstances
365can you change the author's identity (the From header), as it is the one
366which appears in the changelog.
367 368Special note to back-porters: It seems to be a common and useful practise
369to insert an indication of the origin of a patch at the top of the commit
370message (just after the subject line) to facilitate tracking. For instance,
371here's what we see in 2.6-stable :
372 373 Date: Tue May 13 19:10:30 2008 +0000
374 375 SCSI: libiscsi regression in 2.6.25: fix nop timer handling
376 377 commit 4cf1043593db6a337f10e006c23c69e5fc93e722 upstream
378 379And here's what appears in 2.4 :
380 381 Date: Tue May 13 22:12:27 2008 +0200
382 383 wireless, airo: waitbusy() won't delay
384 385 [backport of 2.6 commit b7acbdfbd1f277c1eb23f344f899cfa4cd0bf36a]
386 387Whatever the format, this information provides a valuable help to people
388tracking your trees, and to people trying to trouble-shoot bugs in your
389tree.
390 391 39213) When to use Acked-by: and Cc:
393 394The Signed-off-by: tag indicates that the signer was involved in the
395development of the patch, or that he/she was in the patch's delivery path.
396 397If a person was not directly involved in the preparation or handling of a
398patch but wishes to signify and record their approval of it then they can
399arrange to have an Acked-by: line added to the patch's changelog.
400 401Acked-by: is often used by the maintainer of the affected code when that
402maintainer neither contributed to nor forwarded the patch.
403 404Acked-by: is not as formal as Signed-off-by:. It is a record that the acker
405has at least reviewed the patch and has indicated acceptance. Hence patch
406mergers will sometimes manually convert an acker's "yep, looks good to me"
407into an Acked-by:.
408 409Acked-by: does not necessarily indicate acknowledgement of the entire patch.
410For example, if a patch affects multiple subsystems and has an Acked-by: from
411one subsystem maintainer then this usually indicates acknowledgement of just
412the part which affects that maintainer's code. Judgement should be used here.
413When in doubt people should refer to the original discussion in the mailing
414list archives.
415 416If a person has had the opportunity to comment on a patch, but has not
417provided such comments, you may optionally add a "Cc:" tag to the patch.
418This is the only tag which might be added without an explicit action by the
419person it names. This tag documents that potentially interested parties
420have been included in the discussion
421 422 42314) Using Reported-by:, Tested-by: and Reviewed-by:
424 425If this patch fixes a problem reported by somebody else, consider adding a
426Reported-by: tag to credit the reporter for their contribution. Please
427note that this tag should not be added without the reporter's permission,
428especially if the problem was not reported in a public forum. That said,
429if we diligently credit our bug reporters, they will, hopefully, be
430inspired to help us again in the future.
431 432A Tested-by: tag indicates that the patch has been successfully tested (in
433some environment) by the person named. This tag informs maintainers that
434some testing has been performed, provides a means to locate testers for
435future patches, and ensures credit for the testers.
436 437Reviewed-by:, instead, indicates that the patch has been reviewed and found
438acceptable according to the Reviewer's Statement:
439 440 Reviewer's statement of oversight
441 442 By offering my Reviewed-by: tag, I state that:
443 444 (a) I have carried out a technical review of this patch to
445 evaluate its appropriateness and readiness for inclusion into
446 the mainline kernel.
447 448 (b) Any problems, concerns, or questions relating to the patch
449 have been communicated back to the submitter. I am satisfied
450 with the submitter's response to my comments.
451 452 (c) While there may be things that could be improved with this
453 submission, I believe that it is, at this time, (1) a
454 worthwhile modification to the kernel, and (2) free of known
455 issues which would argue against its inclusion.
456 457 (d) While I have reviewed the patch and believe it to be sound, I
458 do not (unless explicitly stated elsewhere) make any
459 warranties or guarantees that it will achieve its stated
460 purpose or function properly in any given situation.
461 462A Reviewed-by tag is a statement of opinion that the patch is an
463appropriate modification of the kernel without any remaining serious
464technical issues. Any interested reviewer (who has done the work) can
465offer a Reviewed-by tag for a patch. This tag serves to give credit to
466reviewers and to inform maintainers of the degree of review which has been
467done on the patch. Reviewed-by: tags, when supplied by reviewers known to
468understand the subject area and to perform thorough reviews, will normally
469increase the likelihood of your patch getting into the kernel.
470 471 47215) The canonical patch format
473 474The canonical patch subject line is:
475 476 Subject: [PATCH 001/123] subsystem: summary phrase
477 478The canonical patch message body contains the following:
479 480 - A "from" line specifying the patch author.
481 482 - An empty line.
483 484 - The body of the explanation, which will be copied to the
485 permanent changelog to describe this patch.
486 487 - The "Signed-off-by:" lines, described above, which will
488 also go in the changelog.
489 490 - A marker line containing simply "---".
491 492 - Any additional comments not suitable for the changelog.
493 494 - The actual patch (diff output).
495 496The Subject line format makes it very easy to sort the emails
497alphabetically by subject line - pretty much any email reader will
498support that - since because the sequence number is zero-padded,
499the numerical and alphabetic sort is the same.
500 501The "subsystem" in the email's Subject should identify which
502area or subsystem of the kernel is being patched.
503 504The "summary phrase" in the email's Subject should concisely
505describe the patch which that email contains. The "summary
506phrase" should not be a filename. Do not use the same "summary
507phrase" for every patch in a whole patch series (where a "patch
508series" is an ordered sequence of multiple, related patches).
509 510Bear in mind that the "summary phrase" of your email becomes a
511globally-unique identifier for that patch. It propagates all the way
512into the git changelog. The "summary phrase" may later be used in
513developer discussions which refer to the patch. People will want to
514google for the "summary phrase" to read discussion regarding that
515patch. It will also be the only thing that people may quickly see
516when, two or three months later, they are going through perhaps
517thousands of patches using tools such as "gitk" or "git log
518--oneline".
519 520For these reasons, the "summary" must be no more than 70-75
521characters, and it must describe both what the patch changes, as well
522as why the patch might be necessary. It is challenging to be both
523succinct and descriptive, but that is what a well-written summary
524should do.
525 526The "summary phrase" may be prefixed by tags enclosed in square
527brackets: "Subject: [PATCH tag] <summary phrase>". The tags are not
528considered part of the summary phrase, but describe how the patch
529should be treated. Common tags might include a version descriptor if
530the multiple versions of the patch have been sent out in response to
531comments (i.e., "v1, v2, v3"), or "RFC" to indicate a request for
532comments. If there are four patches in a patch series the individual
533patches may be numbered like this: 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4. This assures
534that developers understand the order in which the patches should be
535applied and that they have reviewed or applied all of the patches in
536the patch series.
537 538A couple of example Subjects:
539 540 Subject: [patch 2/5] ext2: improve scalability of bitmap searching
541 Subject: [PATCHv2 001/207] x86: fix eflags tracking
542 543The "from" line must be the very first line in the message body,
544and has the form:
545 546 From: Original Author <author@example.com>
547 548The "from" line specifies who will be credited as the author of the
549patch in the permanent changelog. If the "from" line is missing,
550then the "From:" line from the email header will be used to determine
551the patch author in the changelog.
552 553The explanation body will be committed to the permanent source
554changelog, so should make sense to a competent reader who has long
555since forgotten the immediate details of the discussion that might
556have led to this patch. Including symptoms of the failure which the
557patch addresses (kernel log messages, oops messages, etc.) is
558especially useful for people who might be searching the commit logs
559looking for the applicable patch. If a patch fixes a compile failure,
560it may not be necessary to include _all_ of the compile failures; just
561enough that it is likely that someone searching for the patch can find
562it. As in the "summary phrase", it is important to be both succinct as
563well as descriptive.
564 565The "---" marker line serves the essential purpose of marking for patch
566handling tools where the changelog message ends.
567 568One good use for the additional comments after the "---" marker is for
569a diffstat, to show what files have changed, and the number of
570inserted and deleted lines per file. A diffstat is especially useful
571on bigger patches. Other comments relevant only to the moment or the
572maintainer, not suitable for the permanent changelog, should also go
573here. A good example of such comments might be "patch changelogs"
574which describe what has changed between the v1 and v2 version of the
575patch.
576 577If you are going to include a diffstat after the "---" marker, please
578use diffstat options "-p 1 -w 70" so that filenames are listed from
579the top of the kernel source tree and don't use too much horizontal
580space (easily fit in 80 columns, maybe with some indentation).
581 582See more details on the proper patch format in the following
583references.
584 585 58616) Sending "git pull" requests (from Linus emails)
587 588Please write the git repo address and branch name alone on the same line
589so that I can't even by mistake pull from the wrong branch, and so
590that a triple-click just selects the whole thing.
591 592So the proper format is something along the lines of:
593 594 "Please pull from
595 596 git://jdelvare.pck.nerim.net/jdelvare-2.6 i2c-for-linus
597 598 to get these changes:"
599 600so that I don't have to hunt-and-peck for the address and inevitably
601get it wrong (actually, I've only gotten it wrong a few times, and
602checking against the diffstat tells me when I get it wrong, but I'm
603just a lot more comfortable when I don't have to "look for" the right
604thing to pull, and double-check that I have the right branch-name).
605 606 607Please use "git diff -M --stat --summary" to generate the diffstat:
608the -M enables rename detection, and the summary enables a summary of
609new/deleted or renamed files.
610 611With rename detection, the statistics are rather different [...]
612because git will notice that a fair number of the changes are renames.
613 614-----------------------------------
615SECTION 2 - HINTS, TIPS, AND TRICKS
616-----------------------------------
617 618This section lists many of the common "rules" associated with code
619submitted to the kernel. There are always exceptions... but you must
620have a really good reason for doing so. You could probably call this
621section Linus Computer Science 101.
622 623 624 6251) Read Documentation/CodingStyle
626 627Nuff said. If your code deviates too much from this, it is likely
628to be rejected without further review, and without comment.
629 630One significant exception is when moving code from one file to
631another -- in this case you should not modify the moved code at all in
632the same patch which moves it. This clearly delineates the act of
633moving the code and your changes. This greatly aids review of the
634actual differences and allows tools to better track the history of
635the code itself.
636 637Check your patches with the patch style checker prior to submission
638(scripts/checkpatch.pl). The style checker should be viewed as
639a guide not as the final word. If your code looks better with
640a violation then its probably best left alone.
641 642The checker reports at three levels:
643 - ERROR: things that are very likely to be wrong
644 - WARNING: things requiring careful review
645 - CHECK: things requiring thought
646 647You should be able to justify all violations that remain in your
648patch.
649 650 651 6522) #ifdefs are ugly
653 654Code cluttered with ifdefs is difficult to read and maintain. Don't do
655it. Instead, put your ifdefs in a header, and conditionally define
656'static inline' functions, or macros, which are used in the code.
657Let the compiler optimize away the "no-op" case.
658 659Simple example, of poor code:
660 661 dev = alloc_etherdev (sizeof(struct funky_private));
662 if (!dev)
663 return -ENODEV;
664 #ifdef CONFIG_NET_FUNKINESS
665 init_funky_net(dev);
666 #endif
667 668Cleaned-up example:
669 670(in header)
671 #ifndef CONFIG_NET_FUNKINESS
672 static inline void init_funky_net (struct net_device *d) {}
673 #endif
674 675(in the code itself)
676 dev = alloc_etherdev (sizeof(struct funky_private));
677 if (!dev)
678 return -ENODEV;
679 init_funky_net(dev);
680 681 682 6833) 'static inline' is better than a macro
684 685Static inline functions are greatly preferred over macros.
686They provide type safety, have no length limitations, no formatting
687limitations, and under gcc they are as cheap as macros.
688 689Macros should only be used for cases where a static inline is clearly
690suboptimal [there are a few, isolated cases of this in fast paths],
691or where it is impossible to use a static inline function [such as
692string-izing].
693 694'static inline' is preferred over 'static __inline__', 'extern inline',
695and 'extern __inline__'.
696 697 698 6994) Don't over-design.
700 701Don't try to anticipate nebulous future cases which may or may not
702be useful: "Make it as simple as you can, and no simpler."
703 704 705 706----------------------
707SECTION 3 - REFERENCES
708----------------------
709 710Andrew Morton, "The perfect patch" (tpp).
711 <http://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/stuff/tpp.txt> 712 713Jeff Garzik, "Linux kernel patch submission format".
714 <http://linux.yyz.us/patch-format.html> 715 716Greg Kroah-Hartman, "How to piss off a kernel subsystem maintainer".
717 <http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/maintainer.html> 718 <http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/maintainer-02.html> 719 <http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/maintainer-03.html> 720 <http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/maintainer-04.html> 721 <http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/maintainer-05.html> 722 723NO!!!! No more huge patch bombs to linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org people!
724 <http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=112112749912944&w=2> 725 726Kernel Documentation/CodingStyle:
727 <http://users.sosdg.org/~qiyong/lxr/source/Documentation/CodingStyle> 728 729Linus Torvalds's mail on the canonical patch format:
730 <http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/4/7/183> 731 732Andi Kleen, "On submitting kernel patches"
733 Some strategies to get difficult or controversial changes in.
734http://halobates.de/on-submitting-patches.pdf 735 736--
737